there'll be peace when you are done
by element78
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world, Sam and Castiel search for Dean.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I need to sit myself down and have a long discussion as to what constitutes a one-shot, because clearly I have no actual idea. However, at a guess, ten thousand words isn't it. Chopped into two chapters for manageability.

Title taken from Kansas' _Carry On My Wayward Son_, since I was one of like seven people who knew this song before it became Supernatural's unofficial anthem.

No actual, overt slash, but a lot of overtones and implications. There's some pining and some wishful thinking and maybe a few allusions, but it's not too terribly slashy.

* * *

The supports for the road sign are twisted and bent and broken, the sign itself lying face-down on the ground. In the end, because there is no longer either an all-powerful angel or supernatural steroid junky in the house, Sam has to get a crowbar out of the trunk and pry it up. He braces the edge of the sign on his knee, straining to keep it up, as Castiel ducks down and steals a two-second look at the white block letters stamped across the iridescent green. When he straightens back up Sam lets it fall.

"Denver, 138 miles," Castiel reports. He sounds even more hoarse than usual and it makes Sam cringe to hear it. The fallen angel doesn't talk much, never has, but he screams himself awake some nights, often enough that his voice never quite recovers. Sam doesn't ask what nightmares chase him through his sleep; they all have them, these days, Cas is just too new to the human thing to be numb to it yet.

"We're out of Kansas," Sam says, as if that means anything anymore. Once upon a time, Kansas meant forbidden memories and teasing hints of _home_. Now, it just means another four hundred miles of prairie between one coast and the other. And Interstate 70, which closed every single winter for thirty years running because two inches of snow may not be all that impressive but out in the Kansas prairie it's two inches of wind-driven snow and a whole lot of nothing else out there and it's far too easy to lose the road- hell, to lose everything- in that endless field of white. It's mid-November. They need to get someplace safe for the winter, and soon.

"Are we going?" Castiel asks as they head back to the car.

"To Denver?" Sam clarifies. He closes his eyes, calling on four years of sitting in the passenger's seat, pouring over atlases and road maps. They'd lost the Rand McNally national atlas back in St. Louis and Sam is still kicking himself for that.

"There's I-25. It runs south through Denver, I think," he says. If he keeps his eyes closed he can almost see the maps.

"In the mountains," Castiel says. Sam's gotten pretty good at reading him, can see the uncertainty. He sees the mountains as giant piles of rocks. He doesn't understand Sam's fear of them.

"Only barely," Sam tells him, as if that is in any way reassuring. "We need to get heading south. Last winter was bad, no reason to think this one will be any better."

"They will get better," Cas says as he opens the car door. Once upon a time he might have actually explained that, but all he does today is slide into the car and leave Sam in the cold to contemplate that.

It should sound like a promise, like hope on the horizon. Instead it sounds pointless, lifeless, and Sam spares a moment to pray. They need to find Dean soon, because without him Castiel has literally nothing left to live for.

* * *

Denver is still mostly intact so they stop there for a few days to restock. Sam hunts up a Wal-Mart and grabs the biggest, most detailed atlas he can find off the shelves, then gets the basic twelve pack of colored pencils, and Castiel spends the remainder of their time there carefully altering the pre-apocalypse maps to fit their new reality. Then he starts writing in the margins in at least three different languages, and while Sam is teetering on the line of genius in terms of geometric patterns and formulas- not so much in terms of intelligent life choices and trusting the right people, but that's neither here nor there- he freely admits he has no idea what the former angel is up to. Cas simply _thinks_ _differently_ than humans, always has and always will, and it is within neither his power to explain the difference or Sam's to understand it.

Sam takes his shotgun and his lighter and, after making sure Castiel is settled and safe, goes out to hunt.

Without the pressure of the demons boiling up from below, the threat of angels from above, the constant squeeze of the ever-dominant humanity all around them, the supernatural fauna has flourished. Hunters are not only acknowledged in this new world, they're heralded as heroes in most places, and Sam pays for their room and board and the Impala's filled-to-the-brim gas tank by taking on the creepies and crawlies and things that go bump in the night, the things that most people still half-refuse to admit exist. He wipes out a werewolf strain before it can properly take hold, calling on some locals hunters for backup- real hunters, deer hunters, not his kind of hunter- then does about a dozen salt-and-burns.

The spirits are restless. Castiel says the Reapers are still busy, still backed up from the clusterfuck that was the Apocalypse, and most likely will be for decades; a ripe breeding ground for pissed-off ghosts. And not all of them are the recently deceased, either. The long-dead are starting to misbehave as well. In that regard, a hunter's worth is in their knack for research, which means it's a good job it's Sam here and not Dean.

He never says that out loud.

* * *

The second night they're there, a local boy comes and fetches Sam from werewolf tracking. Sam goes with him without question, knowing exactly what the problem is.

"He's loud," the boy says as they approach the apartment complex Sam and Castiel had been staying in. Even before they enter the building proper Sam can hear Castiel's gut-wrenching cries.

"He's seen a lot," Sam says, as if that explains anything, and waits until the boy gets impatient and leaves before heading into the apartment proper.

Angels don't sleep, and therefore angels don't dream, but fallen angels apparently do both. And Castiel has waded hip-deep through blood and sin in this modern world, has seen and done things that would give anyone nightmares, let alone something as once-pure as an angel. Dean isn't the only one who's been to Hell.

Normally Sam would wake him up and talk him down, try to get him to calm down before letting him go back to sleep, but tonight he's too tired to deal with it and Castiel's long past waking up the neighbors. So he just drops into bed beside the former angel, wraps his arms around him and pulls him in close. Castiel pushes back into him, into his anchoring touch.

"Dean?" he asks muzzily.

Sam has never wanted what Dean has, not since Sam was in sixth grade and the assistant principal found Dean making out with Darcy McPhee in the guidance counselor's office and Sam figured out that what Dean has will always rank highly on the scale of skank. But in that moment he hears the devotion, the hope, in that angel's voice, and feels a bitter longing.

"Just me," he says, forcing all that crap aside. Castiel looks back at him for a moment before tucking his face into the pillow. He feels small in Sam's arms without his angelic might lending him size. "Always me. Sorry."

Castiel says nothing, but he doesn't pull away like he used to.

* * *

I-25 meets up with 40 in Albuquerque, which is fairly important since Castiel has been looking east to Texas ever since they crossed into New Mexico. Sam doesn't say anything to the former angel himself, knowing Castiel doesn't trust the few powers he still has- more like echoes of power, the shadows of the abilities he had once possessed- but he goes east anyways. Cas' Winchester Radar has always been dead-on; he'd found Sam, after all. And, as Pestilence had so reluctantly proved, there's still a little bit of angel in there.

They pinball their way across the state, following the jagged stop-start lines of the roads that haven't been completely trashed, until they reach Corpus Christi. Sam doesn't know much about the place save that it was a party town on the Gulf Coast, famous as a spring break resort; apparently it still serves a similar purpose, although the people here feel less festive and more desperate, trying to leave the ugly world behind. Castiel blunders about town for a little while, a fish so obviously out of water, flinching away from any alcohol thrust in his direction and twice escaping the clutches of some horny young thing by bolting. Finally he silently entreats Sam for help, the _make the human weirdness make sense please_ look he's only ever used on Dean, and Sam steps in before Castiel accidentally gets them both killed.

In a dark-lit bar along a poorly paved back road, Dean's typical haunt, they finally strike gold.

"He didn't say his name," the bartender says. She's approaching the far side of middle age and has a deep voice with just a touch of smokiness. She'd be a kickass blues singer, Sam thinks. And she kind of reminds him of Ellen, so he forces himself to focus on the singer part. "Just cleared out a nest of them goat eaters and that shapeshifting maneater bitch."

Sam runs this through his mental supernatural encyclopedia and offers tentatively, "Chupacabras and a siren?"

"That's them. Man on a mission, that one."

Trying to right all the wrongs in the world, trying to solve all the little problems to make up for blowing the big one. Sam knows the feeling.

"He headed up the coast," she adds. "Think he was aiming for Houston."

"Thanks," Sam tells her, and means it. Money is no good these days and his only tradable commodity is his skill as a hunter, which she has no need for; words are all he has to offer.

He heads back outside, where a fallen angel waits in the car, and follows his brother's footsteps along the coast.

* * *

They don't make it to Houston.

Galveston Bay is sheltered by a long thin stretch of island acting as a buffer against the ocean proper, protecting the bay from storm surges and extreme tide effects. The sheltered bay offers safe docking to everything from twenty-foot motorboats to fishing trawlers to cargo haulers to- and Sam stares at this one until it's out of eyeshot and a bit longer still- a Navy aircraft carrier. But the city of Galveston itself is on the barrier island, so it's there they go, for food and gas and information. They get the first two and Sam gets them a hotel room for the night so he can tackle the third, and he's just gotten out of the car when he turns around and just about has a heart attack on the spot because Castiel is_ right there_.

"Jesus, Cas," Sam gasps, collapsing back against the Impala. "Make some noise next time, please?"

"Something's here," Castiel says, not sparing Sam a single glance. He's staring out over the motel parking lot like he's afraid the whole world will disappear if he so much as blinks. "Something powerful."

Sam's first instinct is to grab a gun out of the trunk. His second instinct, more recently developed, is to push Cas back into the car and take off.

"What is it?" he asks instead. "Demon?" He hesitates before asking- there's been no reports, no sightings, no omens since the end of the Apocalypse. All signs point to the demons beating a hasty retreat to Hell, just like the angels returned to Heaven after Michael and Lucifer's bloody, deadly stalemate. But he can't think of anything else that would get this sort of a reaction from Castiel.

"No. Angel."

"What?" Sam demands, when his mind catches up and his voice starts working again. By then Castiel is already moving. Sam forces himself to get it in gear, catching up in three long strides and matching his pace to Castiel's. "Are you sure about this?"

"Not entirely," Castiel admits calmly. "But I intend to find out."

"Yeah, that's great," Sam says, trying really hard not to think about what the ever-loving hell could possibly play angel well enough to fool Cas. "But what I meant was, are you sure you should be going to check it out? Family reunions don't tend to end well for you, remember."

Castiel rolls his shoulders and Sam knows he's feeling the catch and pull of scar tissue over his shoulder blades. Or maybe he's feeling the lightness on his shoulders where there had once been the weight of wings. "I will be discreet," he says.

Sam remembers that long, bloody night- Castiel had presented with him a sterilized knife and a small mountain of gauze and a paper with a series of complicated sigils that he had too calmly requested Sam carve into his back. It had reminded him of Van Nuys, not so long ago back then, when Dean had been holding a box cutter and Sam had been holding Castiel, because even though he'd still been an angel he was too human to control his instinctive reaction to the pain. He remembers listening, unable to even do him the honor of watching his sacrifice, as Castiel blew away what little angel remained in him.

He still has those scars, a faint echo of a banishing sigil etched onto his chest. Sam's own nightmares feature them sometimes.

Sam slides his hands into his pockets and slouches a little, loosening his shoulders and letting them slump, trying to make himself look smaller, less intimidating. It's a little depressing that it still works for him now as much as it had when he first started doing it, back in his junior year of high school when he'd abruptly realized one day that he had three inches on his own father. Castiel looks at him, a question in his eyes.

"What?" Sam half-asks, half-challenges. "I can be discreet, too."

Castiel does something almost like smiling and Sam thinks that while he's not who Cas would choose to be here beside him if he had any say in the matter, then he's a close second, and the former angel is grateful for his presence either way. It's a good feeling; maybe he can't fix Castiel, but he can keep him from breaking further.

* * *

The angel- and it is an angel, Castiel confirms it the second he lays eyes on it- is wearing a reasonably attractive blond man. He has the sort of face that suggests smirking comes more naturally to him than smiling, and Sam has to fight the desire to dislike him on the spot. They watch from a distance as the angel smiles and laughs and drinks some form of amber-colored alcohol from the bottle- unusual for an angel- and flirts with a girl- very unusual- and spends a few minutes getting very familiar with a younger man- not even on the same scale of non-angelic behavior as the previous transgressions.

"Please tell me Gabriel didn't return from the dead and grab a new vessel," Sam says to Castiel. Gabriel might have tried to help them in the end- too little too late, really, although it's hardly his fault it all went pear-shaped- but Sam is not and will never be in the mood for him.

"It's not Gabriel," Castiel says, which isn't same as saying Gabriel is indeed dead, but Sam knows better than to press. "I believe I know who it is, but it's not…"

The angel kisses his boy toy farewell and waves off the others in the group around him. He finishes off his booze and wanders to the wall of the apartment complex courtyard he's currently in.

"He's dead," Castiel continues. "He died not long after I rebelled. I overheard my siblings talking about it."

Sam watches as the angel moves around the corner. His shadow stretches out behind him, impossibly tall in the sunset light, and Sam sees it blur and flicker. In the split second before it disappears, he can see something almost like wings unfolding.

"Time to go," Sam says, pushing away from the wall they've been somewhat hiding against and grabbing Castiel's arm.

"Too late for that," a new, accented voice says from behind them. Sam spins on his heel but Castiel goes slower, turns to face the newcomer like he's been expecting this and was simply waiting for this moment to hurry up and get here. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice you lurking here?"

It's the angel, naturally. He has his arms folded across his chest and a curious tilt to his head that reminds Sam rather sharply of Castiel. And Sam, who knows angels pretty damn well by now, can feel his power, complete and untarnished, Grace shining bright throughout him even if Sam's human eyes can't see it. He's not fallen or falling, and he's more dangerous than an army of demons.

Then Castiel steps forward. "Balthazar," he says, and that curious, amused gaze goes sharp and pins on his fallen brother. After a long moment the angel- Balthazar- makes an odd noise in the back of his throat.

"Cassie?" he asks, voice dangerously close to breaking, and Sam is echoing 'Cassie?' under his breath when the newcomer steps forward to pull Castiel into a rib-cracking hug. Castiel looks as awkward and uncertain as always and gamely attempts to hug back; Balthazar pulls away with a fond chuckle before Cas ends up hurting himself.

"They said you were dead," Castiel says, almost accusing.

"You should hear what they have to say about you," Balthazar counters, and Castiel somehow manages to not flinch.

Sam makes the mistake of shifting his weight, breaking the delicate spell and drawing the angel's attention back to him. Balthazar looks Sam over with an appreciative gaze that lingers a little too long.

"And you must be Sam Winchester," he says, stepping forward so he and Sam are facing each other directly. "The boy who destroyed the world."

"He had a lot of help," Castiel says darkly while Sam is still trying to decide how he's meant to respond to that.

"Yes, I know, but you can imagine what they have to say about you," Balthazar says, looking back at Sam for the last part.

Sam knows the demons still talk about his brother back in Hell, about the morbid masterpiece artist he had become under Alastair's tutelage. Somehow, knowing that he himself is the subject of angelic water cooler gossip doesn't make him feel any better. He remembers that old saying- _Heaven doesn't want me and Hell's afraid of me_- and wonders if he and his brother are on the verge of living it.

"We need to talk," Castiel says to Balthazar. The angel studies his brother, looks back at Sam, looks around and sees what's missing. After a moment he nods.

"Better to do it somewhere that at least pretends to be private," he says, and leads the way.

* * *

"The upstairs neighbors are very noisy," Balthazar says as he leads them into a bar. The door had been locked and the bar itself is closed, which hadn't fazed Balthazar in the slightest. The bartender comes out from the back room with a protest half-voiced that dies as she notices the angel and his companions, and she smiles a suggestive sort of smile that Sam tries very hard not to think about. "They were quiet for a while but they've started up again. Lots of bickering."

Sam's about to ask why he thinks they care about his neighbors before realizing what he means. Thinking Balthazar to be dead, the other angels had most likely not bothered to cut him off the way they had Castiel, so he's still tuned in to Angel Radio.

"Anything interesting?" he asks as he slides into the first available booth. Castiel sits next to him, more out of habit than conscious decision, while the angel smirks in amusement and sits opposite them.

"Not to outsiders, no," Balthazar answers. He offers the bartender a surprisingly charming smile as she comes over with three beers and watches her as she leaves, and Sam thinks that Dean would really hate this guy. He's too much like Dean himself in all the wrong ways. "It's all politics. There is some talk about extending mercy to the surviving humans, but that's the radical sect. There's always one of those. No need to worry about them unless they go quiet."

The way he says 'extending mercy' leads Sam to believe he means the sort of mercy typically offered to badly wounded soldiers on battlefields. He sips at his beer and tries very hard not to think about how little a chance they'd stand if the angels decided to be _merciful_.

"Have they said anything about Dean Winchester?" Castiel asks, subtle as a jackhammer. Good ol' Cas.

"Misplaced your Righteous Man, have you? Isn't he a little redundant now?" Balthazar asks, and Sam bristles and thinks that Dean isn't the only one who might have issues with this guy. He drinks his beer to keep himself from saying something stupid- Castiel had spoiled him, had gotten him used to angels who would take all sorts of verbal abuse without flinching. But Balthazar is not Castiel, and Sam has no idea where the lines not to be crossed are with him.

"After…" Sam begins finally, pauses as he tries to figure how to phrase their failed attempt at aborting the Apocalypse. Finally he decides the angel doesn't really need the details and skips over it. "We got split up. Cas found me pretty quick but Dean…" He trails off helplessly, the rest of the story fairly obvious.

"Hmm." Balthazar rests his chin on his hand as he gazes at the two sitting across from him. After a moment he rouses again. "Unfortunately, Enochian warding works on all angels, not just the unfriendly ones, so I can't track him. All I've got is a rumor."

"We'll take it," Sam says, almost desperate.

"A couple of months ago a hunter with some serious skill rolled through town," the angel says, taking Castiel's beer since he has yet to touch it. "I try to avoid hunters, so I never actually saw him, but he sounds like your boy."

"What makes you say that?" Sam asks. Balthazar finishes off Castiel's beer and takes the three bottles and lines them up on the edge of the table.

"He had a gun, an old six-shooter," he says casually. "Wouldn't let anyone else touch it." There was a brief pause, then Balthazar puts one finger on the lip of the first bottle and tips it casually forward, sending it to shatter on the ground. "I could feel its power three miles out."

It had never occurred to Sam to wonder what the Colt looks like, feels like, to angels and demons. He doesn't spare the time to ask now. The Colt gets around like a bad case of pinkeye in a kindergarten class, but the man Balthazar is talking about simply has to be Dean.

"Which way?" Sam says. For a long moment Balthazar merely looks at him. Then he puts his finger on the second bottle and tilts it, rolls it so the mouth is pointing in the direction as he names it.

"North," he says, and Sam doesn't wait for the second bottle to hit the ground before he's gone.

* * *

Sam watches Castiel watch Galveston dwindle to nothing in the rearview mirror. It's the first time the former angel has ever expressed any interest whatsoever for where they've been, focused instead as he always is on where they're going.

"We'll come back," he says softly. Castiel swings those blue eyes down to meet Sam's gaze and Sam can't even pretend to understand the emotion there. He tries to imagine what it would be like, thinking he's the last man on earth and finding out one day that he isn't. Cas may have been downgraded to human but Balthazar hadn't seemed too bothered by this, and he'd been friendly enough, even if he'd made it clear he was only helping because Castiel had asked. Sam would have thought stoic, quiet Castiel would have no friends in Heaven willing to take such a risk for him. He's grateful he was wrong.

"When?" Castiel asks.

"When we find Dean," Sam says. It's always _when,_ never _if_.

"And if he's gone by then?" Cas presses, glossing over the finding-Dean thing like Sam does.

"Then he's gone," Sam tells him. "He's an angel, Cas. He'll drop in when he feels like it. It sucks, but that's how it's always been."

Castiel says nothing, not acknowledging Sam's gentle dig. But he stops watching the mirror.

* * *

I-45 north from Galveston picks up 35 at Dallas, which runs within twenty miles of Lawrence, and Sam isn't exactly inclined to overlook that coincidence. Lawrence, the town where it all began and ended, the town it always keeps coming back to.

Dean hadn't taken a car out of Texas, they learn in Oklahoma City. He'd hitched a ride with a supply truck instead. In the interim the truck had gone and come and gone again, and would like as not be back sometime within the week, if they were willing to wait. Meeting Balthazar had lit a fire within Castiel, had brought back that scary-intense angel focus, and Sam has to rein him in, has to remind him that making good time will only set them back that much more if they're working off bad information. Balthazar had said north, but that means nothing; just about everything in the continental US is north of Galveston.

And winter is settling in, cold and snowy and invasive. Dean had gone north two months ago in early October. Now it's December, and even Oklahoma already has a light dusting of snow. Sam watches the northern horizon, and the former angel, for storm clouds and waits.

* * *

The second hunt in Oklahoma City on goes bad; the spirit gets the drop on him, as spirits sometimes do, and he gets thrown through a plate glass window. Time seems to slow down enough for him to literally feel his skin slicing and splitting open. Then he hits the ground and real time snaps back in a heady rush and he lies there, gasping and dizzy, feeling his blood escaping into a warm pool around him. He has enough time to think that maybe taking on turbo-charged post-apocalyptic spirits alone wasn't his brightest idea, and that this was always going to happen and it had only ever been a matter of when, and to wonder how long it will take Castiel to figure out Sam isn't coming back.

Then the spirit flickers into view just above him, delighted grin on its face, and the world erupts with the familiar sound of fire and the spirit is torn to shreds. Sam has just enough time to thank God Bobby had taken the time to teach Castiel how to use a shotgun before the world goes blurry and dark.

A few minutes later he's back among the living, drinking straight from a bottle of whiskey as Castiel carefully redoes the bandages he'd hastily slapped on to keep Sam from bleeding to death while Cas dealt with the ghost. The former angel does his work by the light of burning bones and Sam watches the firelight shift on the planes of Castiel's face and turns his eyes a deep indigo, and thinks that this is practically the classic hunter idea of a romantic date. He swallows down more whiskey to keep his mouth occupied so he doesn't actually come out and say something like that.

"How often do you follow me?" he asks, when he can trust himself to speak. Castiel spares him a glance.

"Not often," he says. "When I need to." Like that answers anything. A moment later he rocks back on his heels and looks at his handiwork. It's not half-bad, Sam thinks, considering no one ever actually taught him how to do this. Dean would be proud. Hell, _Sam_ is proud, not to mention grateful.

Sam has never asked if Castiel wanted to go hunting with him, but Cas hasn't ever said anything about it, either. Despite Sam's best efforts, the former angel has picked up some of Dean's more annoying habits, including his refusal to actually talk about things. Sam makes a mental note to ask from now on, because he can see in the tiny tremors of Castiel's hands, in the way he sticks a little too close to Sam's side, that Sam had scared the hell out of him.

When they let him leave the hospital the day after next- and that's one of the few things Sam likes about this new world, that he can go to a hospital after getting the crap kicked out of him on a hunt and be perfectly honest about what happened- he heads back to the hotel and finds Castiel sitting on the bed with the atlas in his lap.

"Heard the truck driver was here yesterday," he says conversationally as he sits down on the other bed, facing the former angel, and tries not to wince. The doctor, knowing his patient to be a transitory who would be gone within a day, had used stitches that anyone with a steady hand and a decently sharp pair of scissors could take out.

"Yes," Castiel says. "I spoke to him. He said Dean rode with him to Kansas City. Dean said something about going to Missouri before he left."

"Missouri?" Sam echoes. It doesn't seem right, doesn't _feel_ right. Dean would have happily added a hundred miles to his trip just to leave a buffer between himself and Lawrence; it makes no sense that he would go so close to the town without actually going to it.

Then he remembers another conversation, similar in ways to this one, way back when angels were still caring beings that Sam prayed to every day and the thing that killed Mom had no name.

"Missouri," he says again, and Castiel looks at him questioningly, hearing the change in his voice. "Missouri, of course. Not the state. Grab the stuff, we gotta hurry."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Took a while, my apologies. I reread and was dissatisfied with the ending and adjusted it.

Also, a friend recently gave me the Supernatural soundtrack. I think I set off the neighbor's car alarm with my squealing. It is _awesome_.

* * *

What Dean had done all those years ago to land himself in the doghouse with Missouri Moseley, Sam still doesn't know. But he's starting to regret laughing about it.

Sam dumps the last of the freshly cut logs onto the pile in the shed and places the ax on its post, all very carefully- he doesn't want to pop any stitches, as there are no doctors in Lawrence and the nearest functioning hospital is in Wichita. He grabs a few of the smaller, more manageable pieces of wood and turns and heads back up to the house.

Most places no longer have electricity, so Missouri keeps her house warm with towels around the doors and a raging fire in the fireplace. Sam tosses one of the logs on and moves over to the couch, where Castiel sits with a lukewarm cup of tea that he's regarding with his typical childlike curiosity.

Missouri, sitting in her armchair by the fire with her own cup of tea, smiles benignly. "Hello, Sam," she says warmly, as if he's only just gotten here and she hasn't had him doing chores for the past hour. She tilts her chin to indicate Castiel. "Doesn't talk much, does he?"

"He hasn't just…" Sam begins, then stops. Because of course he has just sat here in total silence this whole time. Even two years as human hasn't managed to teach Castiel the meaning of the word 'awkward'.

"So what did you boys need?" Missouri asks as Sam sits down beside Castiel.

"Came to talk," he replies as he takes the still-warm cup of tea she offers him. It doesn't look or smell like any tea he's seen before. "Has Dean been here recently?"

"Poor boy," she says. "Yes, he was here. Must have been, oh, five weeks ago?"

"Why was he here?" Castiel asks, setting his tea aside. Sam manages a few polite, perfunctory sips of his own before he also puts it down.

"He was lost," Missouri tells them, solemn as a churchgoer. "Lost and looking for something. I don't know what. _He_ didn't know what." She sighs and looks out the window, and Sam wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that she's looking in the direction of the old Winchester house. After a moment she returned to them, looking back at her guests. "He won't want to be found, I can tell you that."

"He doesn't believe he deserves to be saved," Cas says. "He never has."

"But you saved him anyway," Missouri counters, leaning forward a bit. "That is your hand, isn't it, on his shoulder?"

Castiel rocks back in his seat, staring at her with wide eyes, but she isn't finished with him yet.

"You still have your light, you know. It's not very bright but it's there, like an ember in the ashes. There's no power in the world that can snuff that last little bit of light."

The angel lunges to his feet, knocking over the cup of tea. He gives Sam a hurt, betrayed look, then heads for the door.

When he's gone, after she's picked up the fallen cup and pressed a towel onto the carpet to soak up the tea, Missouri turns to Sam. "What exactly is that boy?" she asks, and because she sounds curious more than sympathetic, he tells her.

"Human, now. But once he was an angel."

"An angel? A real angel?" Missouri demands, and when Sam nods, she sighs. "Oh, sugar, I wish you'd told me before I went and did that. There's no way that boy could've handled that well."

Sam glances back towards the door, but stays where he is. They're here for a reason, after all, and walking out now won't do anyone any good.

"Uh…" he begins, trying not to sound callous and uncaring about his friend's distress. "About Dean?"

"Your brother was here," Missouri says. "He stayed for three days. Went up to your old house that last day, then he left. Went north, I'm pretty sure."

"North," Sam echoes. "Where are you going, Dean?" he mutters under his breath.

"I don't know, but Sam, I was serious." She looks at the window, at the Impala in the driveway and Castiel pacing beside it. "He's not fully human. He's still got a few powers left to him. You need to trust them, even if he doesn't. Especially if he doesn't."

"Thanks, Missouri," Sam says quietly.

"Anytime, sweetie. You boys take care of yourselves, now, and when you find your bonehead brother, let me know."

* * *

In one of the small, now mostly empty, suburbs of Kansas City, a sign on the side of the road declares there to be a working gas station at the next exit, so Sam pulls off. There's an empty shell of a shopping mall and a gutted McDonald's and, true to word, a gas station with a tanker truck sitting in the parking lot. Most people find gas to be ridiculously expensive- gone are the days when two-fifty a gallon causes bitter complaints- but all Sam has to do is pop the trunk and show off the tools of his trade as proof of his occupation, and he gets the gas free. People like hunters these days. They go to great lengths to get hunters to like them.

Instead of getting back on the highway, Sam pulls into the mall's parking lot. They sit in total silence after he kills the engine and he knows enough to know it's up to him to start the conversation- any waiting game he tries to play, the guy who's been around since the birth of the planet is gonna win.

"I didn't know she would do that," he says finally.

"It's not your fault," Castiel tells him, still looking out the window. "Human psychics are aberrations. Their behavior can be unpredictable."

There are so many things Sam wants to say to that, but he puts it aside for now- although they'll come back to it later; he can't let Cas go around talking about people like they're animals in a nature documentary, and he's more than a little curious about what other type of psychic there is.

"Yeah, but your track record with psychics isn't that good," he says. "I should've told you about her. I'm sorry."

Castiel clearly has no idea what Sam is apologizing for, but he's apologizing, and that's something Castiel knows the proper procedure for. "It's okay," he says, and Sam can all but hear Dean's voice in that second.

He remembers that look of betrayal back in Missouri's house and thinks that maybe it's not forgiven, just forgotten, but he also knows enough to recognize the great big Do Not Enter sign flashing in his face, so he backs off. Instead he focuses on something else.

"So… now what?" he says finally. Castiel blinks and looks back at him.

"Did the psychic not know where to go?" he asks.

"Dude, _Dean_ doesn't know where he's going," Sam points out. "How could Missouri figure it out?"

From the look in his eyes, Castiel knows what Sam is asking, and as always, he's uncomfortable with it. Missouri had gotten it dead-on about Cas not trusting himself. "What about Bobby?"

"If Bobby'd heard something, he'd have found a way to get word to us," Sam says reasonably. The angel's jaw sets but otherwise there's no acknowledgment. "C'mon, Cas. You haven't been wrong so far."

Castiel shifts in his seat, not liking this, a purely human response to his discomfort. Sam patiently waits him out, noting how the former angel keeps looking out the window and knowing what was coming long before it came.

"North," he says, finally, and though it sounds almost like a question there's certainty in his eyes. Sam remembers when Castiel had found him, not even a month after they failed to stop Lucifer and Michael, how he had turned around one day to find the former angel standing behind him with a triumphant little smile. Because Sam had been where he was supposed to be, where Cas had somehow known he'd be. But Castiel isn't as confident with his ability to locate Dean for some reason. Maybe because it matters more.

Back in New Mexico, Castiel had looked east, and when they had gone east they found Balthazar and picked up Dean's trail. Now Castiel looks north.

"North it is," Sam says, and starts the car up once more.

* * *

About forty miles out of Des Moines Sam finally stops. There's a foot of snow on the ground, and even the highway- which people keep clear, since the trucks that travel the interstate are the only way to get supplies after the train line went belly-up- has a crunchy layer of slush that will freeze into a sheet of ice overnight. The Impala is already slip-sliding around, and that's only today. Tomorrow will be a nightmare.

The post-Apocalyptic winter had surprised everyone with its ferocity. It had set in early and stayed late and subjected people to brutal cold snaps and tons of snow and layers of ice three inches thick. The rest of the year was unobjectionably mild, nice even, but winter seemed determined to kick humanity's collective ass, and seems set to do it again.

"Which way now?" Sam asks. They're parked on the side of the road, Sam trying to make sense of the heavily edited atlas, Castiel mostly watching the horizon and occasionally pacing in agitation. He's wearing some long wool coat he'd picked up somewhere, and it fits him better than his normal trench coat. It also accents the fact that Cas isn't eating right, is almost dangerously thin.

"West," the former angel says. He tucks his chin against his chest and shuffles his feet a little, as if to say, _see, I was right, can't trust this so-called power of mine._

"Bobby's just west of here," Sam tells him. If they leave now, they might even make it there before midnight and the hard freeze.

Cas doesn't look at him. After a long moment he sighs and looks down, turning his face just enough for Sam to see him in profile.

"He didn't wish to be found in Hell, either," he says, and Sam goes very, very still. Dean remembers nothing of his ascent from Hell- his memory goes from just another soul on the rack before him to waking up in his grave- and Castiel has never mentioned it.

"He hid from you?" he asks, knowing he second he says it that the answer will be no.

"He fought me," Castiel corrects him mildly. Something in his tone makes Sam ask.

"Did he hurt you?"

"I did not defend myself against him as strongly as I would any other denizen of Hell," the former angel says. Sam pushes away from the Impala, takes a step forward. Cas turns his head a little more, meets Sam's gaze for a moment. "Yes. Not as much as others have, before or since."

Which, considering the poor bastard got blown up in the 'since', doesn't exactly reassure Sam. "Do me a favor? Don't ever tell him that."

"I have no intention to," Castiel says, looking away again.

Sam takes a moment, trying to place this new piece of information into the frame of their lives. What he was told isn't as important as that he was told it; Castiel has only rarely talked about his life before meeting Dean, and never with Sam.

"Bobby's, then?" Sam asks a few minutes later. Castiel sighs and doesn't say anything, but he gets into the car without protest.

* * *

Bobby Singer, national celebrity, is an idea that takes some serious getting used to, especially for Bobby himself. Out of the interest of politeness, and because Bobby would kick his ass, Sam manages to avoid laughing every time it comes up.

The scrapyard gate is closed, and Sam ends up having to climb it since Bobby simply ignores it when he lays on the horn. There are tire tracks in the snow leading up to the gate, several different treads carved deep into the slush, some looking as recent as only a few hours ago.

"Seriously," Sam grunts as he drops back into his seat in the car after pushing the gate open, "is Bobby the only guy in the world with a half-decent supernatural library?"

"No," Mister Literal says. "But he is the only one in the American Midwest, and the only one whose existence was announced on national radio."

And hadn't Bobby been thrilled to hear one of his hunting buddies had ratted him out to the country at large, declaring him the best source of information any hunter could ask for. A little bit of recognition for his decades of work and experience would be appreciated, but the sudden popularity means he has to deal with idiots and amateurs, and if it weren't so much effort to pack it all up and move, he'd have up and vanished within a month.

Sam isn't surprised when the business end of a shotgun taps the passenger window as the Impala parks beside the house. Castiel rolls the window down and Sam leans over to be included in the conversation.

"Bobby," Castiel greets him solemnly.

"Boys," Bobby says, just as solemn. "Any luck with Dean?"

"Long story," Sam says.

Bobby braces the shotgun against his shoulder, carefully looking them both over. After a moment he snorts. "Go close that gate," he orders, "Don't want any of them tourists showin' up."

* * *

They get a free pass that night with the promise of an interrogation over breakfast. The panic room is Castiel's when they're here, partially because it gives the former angel some semblance of privacy, mostly because it puts solid iron walls between him and the rest of the house whenever he has one of his nightmares. Sam takes the couch, because the spare bedrooms have been taken over by Bobby's impressive collection of stuff, and wakes up the next morning when the older man starts rattling around the kitchen, making far more noise than strictly necessary. After a few minutes, while Sam is still in denial about being awake, Bobby appears in the doorway.

"Now, did you find Dean, yes or no?"

"No," Sam says, then sighs and rolls off the couch.

Sam tells him the story, from the last time they'd left to now, over a sparse breakfast of toast and coffee. When he gets to the part about Balthazar he can tell he immediately has Bobby's complete attention.

"Hell. Angels." Bobby glances out the window, as if expecting to see Heaven's army descending. "They comin' back?"

"More like Balthazar never left," Sam says. "According to Cas, he faked his own death. And according to Balthazar, the angels are too focused on internal politics to care about Earth for now."

"Makes sense," Bobby says. "There was supposed to be a winner. Nobody counted on Michael and Lucifer killin' each other."

Because their original vessels never said yes, which is something they managed to get right, at least. Both angels had gone into that fight with one hand tied behind their back because they weren't in their proper vessels. The world had survived because of it.

"And with Lucifer gone and you boys knockin' all of the big shots out, there's probably a power vacuum in Hell too," Bobby continues.

"Crowley," Sam mutters. He had long ago learned his lesson about trusting demons; Crowley may have done them an unsolicited favor or two in his time, but he's still the enemy, and he's probably the most dangerous demon in Hell right now.

"Guess you boys are heading out again soon," Bobby says, because Crowley is a sore point with the old hunter.

"We're close, Bobby," Sam says, half promise and half plea. Bobby can't make them stay, but he could ask them to and make it that much harder to leave again. If it was anyone other than Dean, Sam would have given up long ago. Sometimes he worries that he'll give up anyways, even after everything. Sometimes the only thing that keeps him going in knowing that Castiel will never stop, for any reason, and Sam can't just leave him.

Bobby looks out the window, at the low grey sky and the gentle fluffy snow covering everything.

"Waste of time tellin' you to stop," he says. "Just make sure you're somewhere safe by January, you hear?"

Sam nods once, then goes to get Castiel. They've got a little over two weeks, and every second counts.

* * *

The storms finally catch them in Kadoka, South Dakota.

Once a small town known only for its proximity to the Badlands, Kadoka has flourished as the last town along I-90 before the long haul through the Badlands and Wyoming, since Rapid City had been flattened by a monster tornado during the Apocalypse. It's a nice enough town, Sam thinks. Considering they'll probably have to hole up here until the worst of the January storms are over, it's a good job he doesn't mind the place.

He stops at the local tavern, which tends to second as the town hall in these days, to ask about a place to stay for a while. When he comes back out, he's accompanied by a man who called himself the town sheriff, which probably means he got the job before the world ended and people still respect him enough to listen to him despite his lack of actual authority. He reminds Sam of a tough, leathery old cowboy from one of the countless spaghetti Westerns from Sam's childhood.

"You're a hunter?" he asks, chewing almost aggressively on the cap of a pen- cigarettes are hard to come by, these days. Sam spares him a single nod of acknowledgement, more focused on the Impala sitting empty in the parking lot. A quick scan of the area shows Castiel across the street, talking to a young girl and her mother in a pitiful little playground. He is capable of having a normal conversation and sounding like a normal person, Sam knows, but the odds of it actually happening are against it. Before he can get too worried, though, the fallen angel turns and starts to head back over, the girl even giving him a forlorn little wave.

"Yeah," Sam says, looking back at the sheriff. "You got something?"

"We got werewolves, I think," the man says, in the same general tone people use to say _we've got mice, I think_. Castiel stops at Sam's elbow, a thoughtful tilt to his head as he watches the sheriff. "Two, three people go missin' every month, right around the full moon."

"Missing?" Sam echoes.

"Most of 'em," the sheriff amends. "We found a few, all torn up."

"Werewolves don't abduct people, before or after killing them," Sam says slowly, thoughtfully. "They don't take anything but the hearts."

"Well, we got somethin' with big claws and teeth tearin' people up every full moon," the sheriff says with a shrug.

"And the dogs?" Castiel asks, causing both the other men to look at him in total confusion.

"What dogs?" Sam asks blankly.

"Local dogs been goin' missing," the sheriff says thoughtfully, studying Castiel. "They've been vanishing off the moon cycle, though, so I didn't make much of it. Think it's related?"

"Dogs have been man's last and most reliable defense against predators for ten thousand years," Castiel says, and something in his tone as he says 'predators' sends a shiver down Sam's spine. He looks over at the little girl in the park, sees now the pink leash in her hands, no dog on the end.

He had noticed, on their way into town, the lack of dogs. Normally people take them with everywhere now, especially when there's something supernatural acting up. He had shrugged it off. But Castiel, as a being that had probably watched the taming and domesticating of the dog and understood the importance of its role even in modern days, had not.

"If this is a werewolf, it knows what it is, and it's covering its tracks," Sam tells the sheriff. "Hiding the bodies, killing dogs."

"Yup," the sheriff drawls around the pen cap. "That's what the other guy said."

For one long moment, Sam can hear his heartbeat, can feel his lungs working. For one long moment, he is detached from the world.

Then he turns to the sheriff and, far too calmly, says, "What other guy?"

* * *

The house they've been given is a proper, actual house; granted, it's only a two-bedroom-one-bath, but still. It's even got a diesel generator hooked up. Sam follows the sheriff's directions, driving carefully down the back roads as the snow falls thick and silent, focusing on the world outside the Impala so he doesn't have to look at Castiel and see the death glare he knows he's getting.

Castiel waits until they've found the house, until Sam has pulled into the driveway and gotten out and opened the garage door. When he turns around, he finds the former angel standing just behind him.

"Dean was here less than a week ago," Castiel says, as if Sam had somehow missed that part.

"And by this time tomorrow the whole western half of the state is going to be covered in a foot of snow," Sam counters. Castiel glances at his shoulder, brushes off the snowflakes there as if it were that simple to dismiss the weather. "We'll stay here where it's safe until the roads are good again, okay? One week."

"It is not safe here," Castiel points out.

"Full moon was last week, Cas. We're good." He's never known Castiel to freak at anything- the guy took on a Horseman within days of being turned human, after all- and he wonders as he steps around the former angel if this is a sign that maybe he's not ready to start helping Sam on hunts after all.

"It isn't a werewolf," Castiel says, and Sam stops by the car's door. After a long moment he sighs and turns to face the fallen angel. He's braced for a fight, Sam sees, and knows he won't get anything without giving something first.

"He passed within twenty miles of Bobby's house and didn't stop," he says, as gently as he could. "Missouri's right. He doesn't want to be found."

"I don't care," Castiel retorts, and normally Sam would celebrate that Castiel is finally, _finally_, doing what he wants, instead of just following Dean's orders in place of Heaven's. Instead all he feels is sympathy for Dean, and an appreciation for just how much of a self-centered brat he had been after Jess, during that search for Dad.

"He'll be fine, Cas," he continues, gentle and soothing still. "He's not stupid, he's found someplace to wait out this storm just like us. We'll find him. We just need to live long enough to do it."

Logic sways Castiel, as it never had Dean, and the fallen angel reluctantly relaxes. After a moment he moves, allowing Sam to pull the Impala into the garage. Sam parks the car, closes the garage door, and heads around the side of the house to crank up the generator.

"So. Not a werewolf?" he prods as Castiel follows him.

"Why does the sheriff believe it to be a werewolf?" Castiel asks. Sam considers the question; he's seen everything Castiel has, heard everything Castiel heard, and somewhere in there, something that had screamed _werewolf_ to Sam had screamed _fake_ to Castiel. He feels the Doctor Watson to Cas' Sherlock Holmes, and doesn't care for it.

And then, like the proverbial light bulb lighting up, he gets it.

"Because the people were disappearing around the time of the full moon," he says. "If the werewolf had gone so far as to kill off the dogs to cover its tracks, why leave the most obvious sign?"

"It cannot stop itself killing," Castiel agrees. "But it can kill in a similar manner during the other weeks."

"Or abduct people a week or two before and hold them someplace," Sam continues. He gestures out to the open land beyond the town. "Lot of empty space out there. Why stay so close to town during the full moon?"

"Town is where the people are. It feeds on humans, and it is smart enough to make the townspeople believe it to be a werewolf." Castiel looks at the house next door, empty and cold and dark.

"I think I know what it is," Sam says. "These people have a serious problem, Cas."

* * *

The wendigo is, by nature, a coward. It's strong and fast, but it prefers trickery and sneaking around to an actual hunt. It's smart enough, and in some twisted way still human enough, to speak intelligibly, but it only uses this to lure people into a trap. It prefers the forest, but its prey suffered a massive population decrease in recent years, forcing the wendigo to get creative. Sam doesn't doubt the thing is smart enough to frame a werewolf for its kills, and wonders how many hunters this one has fooled.

The day after next, once the snow is done falling, they head out for the ranch to the northeast of town. Three people have disappeared from the ranch lands and one body was found there, back in the spring. Sam knows that the snow, up to his knees in places, will slow the wendigo as much as its prey. And this is not its native habitat; it would not risk attacking two full-grown men, in the snow, in the open, in daylight. Or so he reasons. All the same, he gives Castiel a flare gun and keeps one for himself.

The ranch owner is unable to help much; his lands are huge and the man who found the body had moved on during the summer. He does take them out to where the body was found and point out local landmarks. Plenty of places for a wendigo to hide, Sam thinks, especially in the winter when people stick close to home. Wendigos don't like the cold either. It's probably only still active to keep up the werewolf ruse.

"Lot of people went missing off these lands," the ranch owner says as they walk back. He glances over his shoulder and shivers. "No one comes out here alone anymore, or within an hour of sunrise or set."

"Not with the moon cycle?" Sam asks.

"It stopped after I told the sheriff," the man says with a shrug. "Then the killin' started, and it was timed with the moon, so he said werewolf."

Sam look around, at the open empty bleak land around them. If the sheriff had come out here, like they had, the wendigo might have seen him, heard them talking about it. And it was human once, and may be human enough still to understand the threat and plan its strategy.

"It's watching," he says to Castiel, barely loud enough to hear, and the former angel nods once and slides a subtle glance to his left, to the broken hills beyond the ranch boundary. Sam doesn't look, knowing he won't see it unless it wants to be seen, but he casually moves around so he's between the other two and the hills.

* * *

Sam had asked for privacy when the sheriff had given them a house, and he'd gotten it. The houses around them are empty, the backyard opening onto the undeveloped land beyond. He'd thought nothing of it earlier but now he stares at the snowy land out the back door, imagining a wendigo sneaking up in the dead of the night. The walls and doors of the house feel so thin.

He's still cold from their walk, his jeans soaking wet from the knee down, the hems caked with snow. He heads back to the master bedroom, where he'd dumped his bag. The window faces the backyard and the blinds are crooked from where Sam had been fighting with them for two days. As he's getting a clean pair of jeans out of his bag he catches a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He straightens up slowly, moves over to the window with careful cautious movements, and looks out to the backyard and the hinterlands beyond. The sun is setting, the snow no longer blinding and glittering under its light, and there's nothing to see out there-

-except for the single line of footprints leading right up to the back door that hadn't been there forty-five seconds ago.

"Cas!" he yells, already moving, his voice lost to the sound of the back door exploding in.

His first thought, panicked and clear as day, is that he's just gotten his brother's angel killed. He should have known a wendigo smart enough to plan a counterstrategy like the werewolf thing would recognize hunters, would know to go after them in the day, inside, when their guard is down.

Then he hears the wendigo scream, its voice like nails on a chalkboard, and smells the chemical smell of fire, and smiles to himself. Everyone and everything seems determined to think less of Castiel because he's lost his wings, when as far as Sam can tell, his downgrade has only made him more dangerous.

The living room is empty, the back door half off its hinges. There's the heavy smell of burnt flesh and smoke and no sign of either a wendigo or a fallen angel.

"Cas?" he calls out warily, tighetening his grip on his flare gun. There's a noise in the kitchen and he follows it, ducking around the corner and putting his back flat to the wall, knowing as he does it that if it's the wendigo he's already blown his advantage, but he can't shoot blind in case it's Castiel.

"It went back outside," Castiel says from where he's leaning against the counter. His flare gun, useless now, is sitting beside him, both his hands occupied with pressing a dish towel against his right side. Sam looks at the spectacular starburst burn mark on the wall where the flare had hit it. Not a direct hit on the wendigo, then, which means it's still alive but hurt and thoroughly pissed.

Sam drops his eyes to Castiel's hands, watches as the towel steadily turns red. The former angel's face is even paler than normal, his hands shaking as he rearranges his grip on the towel. The hunter pushes away from the wall, darting back into the living room to grab the first aid kit from the duffel bag on the floor in the entryway.

Outside, the wendigo screams. It doesn't sound close so Sam ignores it.

He drops to his knees beside Castiel even as the angel himself collapses. He pushes the smaller man over so he's lying on his good side and pulls his shirt up, exposing the wounds- four parallel tracks running along his ribs, the bottom one a deep gash in the unprotected flesh between the bottom rib and the hip bone. Sam takes the towel, rolls it around to a relatively clean portion, and pushes down hard on that last cut. Castiel flinches but doesn't cry out, doesn't try to fight. His gaze is still sharp, his skin almost ashen- he's not dying, but Sam can't let himself forget Castiel has never been so badly injured before, has never been so close to his own mortality. His death at Raphael's hands had been fast and only temporary; this is slow and painful, and no one will be bringing him back a second time.

It's the first time he's seen Castiel afraid of anything.

The wendigo screams, much closer now. Its footsteps crunch through the snow outside, easily heard through the broken back door. Sam picks up the loaded flare gun and shifts so he's facing the doorway, listens to the footsteps in the snow outside, listens to the wendigo's approach-

In the relative silence, with Sam straining so hard to hear, the gunshot is deafeningly loud. Sam jumps and Castiel bites off a whimper as it jars him, eyes wide and fixed on the door.

"That was the Colt," he says. Sam looks at him, sees the expression on his face, and knows arguing is a waste of time. Instead he puts Castiel's hand on the towel, pushing down until he deems the former angel is applying the proper amount of pressure, and gets up.

The wendigo is a sprawled, broken figure in the snow, gaunt and pathetic in death. Sam takes one step out the back door and the person standing over the wendigo spins around, graceful even in the deep snow, gun pointing straight at him. Then it lowers again.

"Sammy?" Dean croaks.

* * *

There's no hospital in Kadoka anymore and Dean's hands are shaking, so Sam digs out the suture kit and stitches up Castiel's wounds himself. Castiel takes Dean's proffered flask and sips from it occasionally, the first time he's touched any alcohol since he polished off that liquor store, and stays resolutely quiet. For all they've been looking for two years for this bastard, now that he's in front of them, they're at a loss as to what to do.

"Figured it wasn't a werewolf," Dean says. It's not the first thing he's said; they're filling up the silence with meaningless chatter to avoid talking about the important issues. He'd already told them he doubled back to Kadoka when he realized how bad the snow was going to get, had settled into one of the empty houses a street over because the sheriff hadn't seemed all that fond of him. "Seemed too easy."

"Yeah, Cas figured that out in ten seconds," Sam says. He tugs on the thread and Castiel flinches and starts to shift away but stops himself before Sam can remind him to sit still.

The wind hits a particular pitch as it whistles through the broken back door. They're going to have to fix that at some point, but Sam is busy and Dean won't leave the room, so it will have to wait.

Finally Dean takes one more fortifying sip from the bottle of beer he'd gotten out of the Impala's trunk- how he'd known it would even be there, Sam hadn't bothered to ask- and says quietly, "Why were you following me?"

"Why were you running?" Castiel counters before Sam can even take a breath. "Why do you never think yourself worthy of saving?"

"We destroyed the world, Cas!" Dean explodes. "The whole fucking world! How many people are dead? Do you even know?"

"So none of us deserve to be happy?" Sam demands.

"No," Dean snaps back immediately. His gaze flickers over the other two. "No," he repeats, to himself this time.

"Just you then," Sam says.

Dean rubs a hand over his face and goes back to his beer, not looking at his brother. Then he leans over and gets the clean gauze out of the first aid kit and tosses it. Castiel tries to catch it but jerks to a halt as the motion pulls at the stitches in his side. The gauze hits Sam right between the eyes, as it was meant to. He gives Dean a disapproving look and ignores it.

"We tried," Sam says, to Dean, to Castiel, to all of them. "We failed. Now we get to clean up our mess."

"Yeah. We've already destroyed the world, what's the worst we can do?" Dean chirps brightly.

"Are you going to run away again?" Castiel asks. For a moment Dean looks startled at the question. Then he shifts in his seat and sighs.

"I'm done with running," he says finally, and Sam releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

* * *

Three days later the supply trucks roll through town, heading west into Wyoming and declaring the road safe for travel, at least until the next snowfall. Castiel reclaims his old spot in the backseat despite the fact that navigator normally gets shotgun and he's the only one who can read the atlas anymore. It's a straight shot back to Sioux Falls anyway, so it hardly matters. When they're on their way to Galveston come spring they might have issues, but that can wait.

Sam tells Dean about Balthazar, and Dean tells them about this weird hunt he was on last year, and Castiel reports far too many of Sam's injuries and close calls for Sam's liking, and Dean watches them both like he's afraid they'll disappear if he looks away.

And the Impala's blunt nose points east, towards home.


End file.
